Switching between dual monitors on Mac Pro and Linux Laptop

I have a Mac Pro with an Apple Cinema Display as the primary monitor and a crappy VGA flat panel as my secondary monitor. I also have a laptop running Ubuntu Linux. The laptop has a small screen, and programming on a laptop keyboard just makes you feel cramped, so I like to connect my Cinema Display as a second monitor and USB keyboard and mouse to make it more comfortable to work on. The problem is when I’m working side-by-side with my Mac Pro and my laptop. If I want to connect a second display to my laptop, I need to disconnect it from my Mac. Same goes with the keyboard and mouse.

A KVM switch would be perfect for this situation. The problem is, I can’t find one that will do the job. After making a trip to Fry’s Electronics, finding out there is a major difference between DVI-D and DVI-I, and making a second trip to Fry’s, I finally settled on the IOGEAR GCS932U MiniView Micro DVI-D KVM switch. Its actually a great little device. It looks cool and works well. No software to install, no AC adapter to crowd your already crowded power strip, and coming in at under $100, it’s probably the best DVI KVM switch you can find.

Now I’ve connected my KVM switch to my computers, with my laptop sitting on my desk to the left, my Cinema Display in the center, and my other monitor on the right. It looks like I’m running triple display! I had to start my laptop with the KVM switched to the laptop until it was fully booted up for it to detect it as a second display. Now all I have to do is press the button, and it successfully switches my Cinema Display from Mac to Linux and back again.

However, there’s one caviat that bothers me a little bit. When I switch from Mac to Linux, the Mac wants to detect displays and refresh itself. The problem is that it never successfully does so. You can tell that it’s trying. I wish there was a way that you could turn off automatically detecting displays. I haven’t found a solution yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The whole point of using the KVM switch is that you are temporarily “disconnecting” the monitor and “connecting” it to the other, and in a second or two, I will be coming back to the display settings that I had before.

Even with this one little hiccup, the IOGEAR GCS932U MiniView Micro DVI-D KVM switch is a great product, and I recommend it above all the other ones that caused me so much frustration.